Field of the Disclosure
The disclosure generally relates to curable polysilyl phosphate compounds and compositions as well as related methods and flame-retardant textiles incorporating the same.
Brief Description of Related Technology
Textile fabrics, like any other solid substrates, experience a rise in temperature when exposed to the heat source. Textile substrate catches fire when the substrate reaches the ignition temperature and initiates the pyrolytic decomposition of the fiber material in textile substrate. The possible products of this pyrolytic reaction are combustible gases, non-combustible gases, and carbonaceous char. These combustible gases mix with the oxygen in air and produce flame.
Flame retardants were developed to minimize financial and life losses that occurred due to fire. These flame retardants have the following major actions in case of fire: 1. The flammability of textile material is reduced and hence the product ignites less easily under the influence of heat source. 2. The flame spread is reduced in case there is ignition of textile substrate. This gives higher escape times from buildings and fire premises in case of fire.
There are several requirements for safety of apparel and furnishing textiles. Some of them include: 1. Safety: In daily life situations, personal and organizational losses occur due to fire where furniture, wall coverings, curtains, and industrial fabrics act as fuel. These losses due to fire can be minimized by using textiles coated with fire retardant finish. 2. Federal law: It is federally mandatory that certain home furnishings and children clothing have certain degree of flame retardancy in them. Hence these classes of textiles must be treated with suitable flame retardant finishes.
Flame retardancy has been an area of keen interest among researchers and industrialists, and considerable work has been undertaken since early 1990 to investigate the behavior of intumescent in textile structures. The current established intumescent chemistry has few drawbacks and has few issues which need to be addressed.
The current flame retardant chemistry is mainly dominated with the use of brominated diphenyl oxide flame retardants and other halogen-based flame retardants. The European community (EC) and the US government have expressed concerns about formation of potentially carcinogenic and highly toxic substances during combustion of these halogen based flame retardants. Dermal exposure of halogen-based flame retardants may cause local irritation to skin, acute to long-term toxicity, genotoxicity, and mutagenicity.